Vegetarianism: A Means to a Higher End

This is a practical cookbook, designed to help you prepare
authentic Indian meals in your own home and to acquaint you with the
tradition behind India's great vegetarian cuisine. It explains not
only the techniques of Vedic, or classical Indian vegetarian cooking,
but also the Vedic art of eating, which nourishes both the soul and
the body and mind.

The word vegetarian, coined by the
founders of the British Vegetarian Society in 1842, comes from the
Latin word vegetus, meaning "whole, sound, fresh, or lively,"
as in homo vegetus-a mentally and physically vigorous person.
The original meaning of the word implies a balanced philosophical and
moral sense of life, a lot more than just a diet of vegetables and
fruits.

Most vegetarians are people who have understood that to contribute
towards a more peaceful society we must first solve the problem of
violence in our own hearts. So it's not surprising that thousands of
people from all walks of life have, in their search for truth, become
vegetarian. Vegetarianism is an essential step towards a better
society, and people who take the time to consider its advantages,
will be in the company of such thinkers as Pythagoras, Socrates,
Plato, Clement of Alexandria, Plutarch, King Asoka, Leonardo da
Vinci, Montaigne, Akbar, John Milton, Sir Isaac Newton, Emanuel
Swedenbourg, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Jean Jacques Rousear,
Lamartine, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Rabindranath Tagore,
Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and Albert Einstein.

Let's examine some of the advantages of becoming vegetarian.

Health and Nutrition

Can a vegetarian diet improve or restore health? Can it prevent
certain diseases?

Advocates of vegetarianism have said yes for many years, although
they didn't have much support from modern science until recently.
Now, medical researchers have discovered evidence of a link between
meat-eating and such killers as heart disease and cancer, so they're
giving vegetarianism another look.

Since the 1960s, scientists have suspected that a meat-based diet
is somehow related to the development of arteriosclerosis and heart
disease. As early as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical
Association said: "Ninety to ninety-seven percent of heart
disease can be prevented by a vegetarian diet." Since that time,
several well-organized studies have scientifically shown that after
tobacco and alcohol, the consumption of meat is the greatest single
cause of mortality in Western Europe, the United States, Australia,
and other affluent areas of the world.

The human body is unable to deal with excessive amounts of animal
fat and cholesterol. A poll of 214 scientists doing research on
arteriosclerosis in 23 countries showed almost total agreement that
there is a link between diet, serum cholesterol levels, and heart
disease. When a person eats more cholesterol than the body needs (as
he usually does with a meat-centered diet), the excess cholesterol
gradually becomes a problem. It accumulates on the inner walls of the
arteries, constricts the flow of blood to the heart, and can lead to
high blood pressure, heart disease, and strokes.

On the other hand, scientists at the University of Milan and
Maggiore Hospital have shown that vegetable protein may act to keep
cholesterol levels low. In a report to the British medical journal
The Lancet, D.C.R. Sirtori concluded that people with the type
of high cholesterol associated with heart disease "may benefit from a
diet in which protein comes only from vegetables."

What about cancer? Research over the past twenty years strongly
suggests a link between meat-eating and cancer of the colon, rectum,
breast, and uterus. These types of cancer are rare among those who
eat little or no meat, such as Seventh-Day Adventists, Japanese, and
Indians, but they are prevalent among meat-eating populations."

Another article in The Lancet reported, "People living in
the areas with a high recorded incidence of carcinoma of the colon
tend to live on diets containing large amounts of fat and animal
protein; whereas those who live in areas with a low incidence live on
largely vegetarian diets with little fat or animal matter."

Rollo Russell, in his Notes on the Causation of Cancer,
says, "I have found of twenty-five nations eating flesh largely,
nineteen had a high cancer rate and only one had a low rate, and that
of thirty-five nations eating little or no flesh, none had a high
rate."

Why do meat-eaters seem more prone to these diseases? One reason
given by biologists and nutritionists is that man's intestinal tract
is simply not suited for digesting meat. Flesh-eating animals have
short intestinal tracts (three times the length of the animal's
body), to pass rapidly decaying toxin-producing meat out of the body
quickly. Since plant foods decay more slowly than meat, plant-eaters
have intestines at least six times the length of the body. Man has
the long intestinal tract of a herbivore, so if he eats meat, toxins
can overload he kidneys and lead to gout, arthritis, rheumatism and
even cancer.

And then there are the chemicals added to meat. As soon as an
animal is slaughtered, its flesh begins to putrefy, and after several
days it turns a sickly gray-green. The meat industry masks this
discoloration by adding nitrites, nitrates, and other preservatives
to give the meat a bright red color. But research has now shown many
of these preservatives to be carcinogenic. And what makes the problem
worse is the massive amounts of chemicals fed to livestock. Gary and
Steven Null, in their book, Poisons in your Body, show us
something that ought to make anyone think twice before buying another
steak or ham. "The animals are kept alive and fattened by continuous
administration of tranquilizers, hormones, antibiotics, and 2,700
other drugs. The process starts even before birth and continues long
after death. Although these drugs will still be present in the meat
when you eat it, the law does not require that they be listed on the
package."

Because of findings like this, the American National Academy of
Sciences reported in 1983 that "people may be able to prevent many
common types of cancer by eating less fatty meats and more vegetables
and grains."

But wait a minute! Weren't human beings designed to be
meat-eaters? Don't we need animal protein?

The answer to both these questions is no. Although some historians
and anthropologists say that man is historically omnivorous, our
anatomical equipment - teeth, jaws, and digestive system-favors a
fleshless diet. The American Dietetic Association notes that "most of
mankind for most of human history has lived on vegetarian or
near-vegetarian diets."

And much of the world still lives that way. Even in most
industrialized countries, the love affair with meat is less than a
hundred years old. It started with the refrigerator car and the
twentieth-century consumer society.

But even in the twentieth century, man's body hasn't adapted to
eating meat. The prominent Swedish scientist Karl von Linne states,
"Man's structure, external and internal, compared with that of the
other animals, shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute
his natural food." This chart (under construction) compares the
anatomy of man with that of carnivorous and herbivorous animals.

As for the protein question, Dr. Paavo Airo, a leading authority
on nutrition and natural biology, has this to say: "The official
daily recommendation for protein has gone down from the 150 grams
recommended twenty years ago to only 45 grams today. Why? Because
reliable worldwide research has shown that we do not need so much
protein, that the actual daily need is only 35 to 45 grams. Protein
consumed in excess of the actual daily need is not only wasted, but
actually causes serious harm to the body and is even causatively
related to such killer diseases as cancer and heart disease. In order
to obtain 45 grams of protein a day from your diet you do not have to
eat meat; you can get it from a 100 percent vegetarian diet of a
variety of grains, lentils, nuts, vegetables, and fruits."

Dairy products, grains, beans, and nuts are all concentrated
sources of protein. Cheese, peanuts, and lentils, for instance,
contain more protein per ounce than hamburger, pork, or porterhouse
steak.

Still, nutritionists thought until recently that only meat, fish,
eggs, and milk product had complete proteins (containing the eight
amino acids not produced in the body), and that all vegetable
proteins were incomplete (lacking one or more of these amino acids).
But research at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Max Plank
Institute in Germany has shown that most vegetables, fruits, seeds,
nuts, and grains are excellent sources of complete proteins. In fact,
their proteins are easier to assimilate than those of meat-and they
don't bring with them any toxins. It's nearly impossible to lack
protein if you eat enough natural unrefined food. Remember, the
vegetable kingdom is the real source of all protein.
Vegetarians simply eat it "direct" instead of getting it second-hand
from the vegetarian animals.

Too much protein intake even reduces the body's energy. In a
series of comparative endurance tests conducted by Dr. Irving Fisher
of Yale University, vegetarians performed twice as well as
meat-eaters. When Dr. Fisher knocked down the non-vegetarians protein
consumption by twenty percent, their efficiency went up by
thirty-three percent. Numerous other studies have shown that a proper
vegetarian diet provides more nutritional energy than meat. A study
by Dr. J. Iotekyo and V. Kipani at Brussels University showed that
vegetarians were able to perform physical tests two to three times
longer than meat-eaters before tiring out-and the vegetarians fully
recovered from fatigue three times more quickly than the meat-eaters.

Economics

Meat feeds few at the expense of many. For the sake of producing
meat, grain that could feed people feeds livestock instead. According
to information compiled by the United States Department of
Agriculture, over ninety percent of all the grain produced in America
goes to feed livestock-cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens-that wind up
on dinner tables. Yet the process of using grain to produce meat is
incredibly wasteful. Figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
show that for every sixteen pounds of grain fed to cattle, we get
back only one pound of meat.

In Diet for a Small Planet, Frances Moore Lappe asks us to
imagine ourselves sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. "Then imagine
the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in from of
them. For the 'feed cost' of your steak, each of their bowls could be
filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains."

Affluent nations do not only waste their own grains to feed
livestock, they also use protein-rich plant foods from poor nations.
Dr. Georg Borgstrom, an authority on the geography of food, estimates
that one-third of Africa's peanut crop (and peanuts give the same
amount of protein as meat) ends up in the stomachs of cattle and
poultry in Western Europe.

In underdeveloped countries, a person consumes an average of four
hundred pounds of grain a year, most of it by eating it directly. In
contrast, says world food authority Lester Brown, the average
European or American goes through two thousand pounds a year, by
first feeding almost ninety percent of it to animals for meat. The
average European or American meat-eater, Brown says, uses five times
the food resources of the average Colombian, Indian, or Nigerian.

Facts such as these have led food experts to point out that the
world hunger problem is artificial. Even now, we are already
producing more than enough food for everyone on the planet-but we are
allocating it wastefully.

Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that bringing down meat
production by only ten percent would release enough grain to feed
sixty million people.

Another price we pay for meat-eating is degradation of the
environment. The heavily contaminated runoff and sewage form
slaughterhouses and feedlots are major sources of pollution of rivers
and streams. It is fast becoming apparent that the fresh water
resources of this planet are not only becoming contaminated but also
depleted, and the meat industry is particularly wasteful. Georg
Borgstrom says the production of livestock created ten times more
pollution than residential areas, and three times more than
industry.

In their book Population Resources, and Environment, Paul
and Anne Ehrlich show that to grow one pound of wheat requires only
sixty pounds of water, whereas production of one pound of meat
requires anywhere from 2,500 to 6,000 pounds of water.

And in 1973 the New York Post uncovered a shocking misuse
of this most valuable resource-one large chicken-slaughtering plant
in the United States was using one hundred mission gallons of water
daily, and amount that could supply a city of twenty-five thousand
people.

But now let's turn from the world geopolitical situation, and get
right down to our own pocketbooks. A spot check of supermarkets in
New York in January 1986 showed that sirloin steak cost around four
dollars a pound, while ingredients for a delicious, substantial
vegetarian meal average less than two dollars a pound. An eight ounce
container of cottage cheese costing sixty cents provides sixty
percent of the minimum daily requirement of protein. Becoming a
vegetarian could potentially save you at least several thousand
dollars a year, tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a
lifetime. The savings to America's consumers would amount to billions
of dollars annually. And the same principle applies to consumers all
over the world. Considering all this, it's hard to see how anyone
could afford not to become a vegetarian.

Ethics

Many people consider the ethical reasons the most important of all
for becoming vegetarian. The beginning of ethical vegetarianism is
the knowledge that other creatures have feelings, and that their
feelings are similar to ours. This knowledge encourages one to extend
personal awareness to encompass the suffering of others.

In an essay titled "The Ethics of Vegetarianism," from the
journal of the North American Vegetarian Society, the conception of
"humane animal slaughter" is refuted. "Many people nowadays have been
lulled into a sense of complacency by the thought that animals are
now slaughtered 'humanely', thus presumably removing any possible
humanitarian objection to the eating of meat. Unfortunately, nothing
could be further from the actual facts of life...and death.

The entire life of a captive 'food animal' is an unnatural one of
artificial breeding, vicious castration and/or hormone stimulation,
feeding of an abnormal diet for fattening purposes, and eventually
long rides in intense discomfort to the ultimate end. The holding
pens, the electric prods and tail twisting, the abject terror and
fright, all these are still very much a part of the most 'modern'
animal raising, shipping, and slaughtering. To accept all this and
only oppose the callous brutality of the last few seconds of the
animal's life, is to distort the word 'humane'."

The truth of animal slaughter is not at all pleasant-commercial
slaughterhouses are like visions of hell. Screaming animals are
stunned by hammer blows, electric shock, or concussion guns. They are
hoisted into the air by their feet and moved through the factories of
death on mechanized conveyor systems. Still alive, their throats are
sliced and their flesh is cut off while they bleed to death. Why
isn't the mutilation and slaughter of farm animals governed by the
same stipulations intended for the welfare of pets and even the
laboratory rat?

Many people would no doubt take up vegetarianism if they visited a
slaughterhouse, or if they themselves had to kill the animals they
ate. Such visits should be compulsory for all meat eater..

Pythagoras, famous for his contributions to geometry and
mathematics, said, "Oh, my fellow men, do not defile your bodies with
sinful foods. We have corn, we have apples bending down the branches
with their weight, and grapes swelling on the vines. There are
sweet-flavored herbs, and vegetables which can be cooked and softened
over the fire, nor are you denied mild or thyme-scented honey. The
earth affords a lavish supply of riches of innocent foods, and offers
you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter, only beasts
satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because
horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass."

In an essay titled On Eating Flesh, the Roman author
Plutarch wrote: "Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for
abstinence from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what
accident and in what state of mind the first man touched his mouth to
gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, set forth
tables of dead, stale bodies, and ventured to call food and
nourishment the pets that had a little before bellowed and cried,
moved and lived... It is certainly not lions or wolves that we eat
out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter
harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us. For the
sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the
duration of life they are entitled to by birth and being."

Plutarch then delivered this challenge to flesh-eaters: "If you
declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first
kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however only through
your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of
ax."

The poet Shelly was a committed vegetarian. In his essay A
Vindication of Natural Diet, he wrote, "Let the advocate of
animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness,
and as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth and
plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming
blood...then, and then only, would he be consistent."

Leo Tolstoy wrote that by killing animals for food, "Man
suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual
capacity-that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like
himself-and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel." He also
warned, "While our bodies are the living graves of murdered animals,
how can we expect any ideal conditions on earth?"

When we lose respect for animal life, we lose respect for human
life as well. Twenty-six hundred years ago, Pythagoras said, "Those
that kill animals to eat their flesh tend to massacre their own."
We're fearful of enemy guns, bombs, and missiles, but can we close
our eyes to the pain and fear we ourselves bring about by
slaughtering, for human consumption, over 1.6 billion domestic
mammals and 22.5 billion poultry a year. The number of fish killed
each year is in the trillions. And what to speak of the tens of
millions of animals killed each year in the "torture-camps" of
medical research laboratories, or slaughtered for their fur, hide, or
skin, or hunted for "sport". Can we deny that this brutality makes us
more brutal too?

Leonardo da Vinci wrote, "Truly man is the king of beasts, for his
brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others. We are
burial places!" He added, "The time will come when men will look upon
the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."

Mahatma Gandhi felt that ethical principles are a stronger support
for lifelong commitment to a vegetarian diet than reasons of health.
"I do feel," he stated, "that spiritual progress does demand at some
stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the
satisfaction of our bodily wants." He also said, "The greatness of a
nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals
are treated."

Religion

All major religious scriptures enjoin man to live without killing
unnecessarily. The Old Testament instructs, "Thou shalt not kill."
(Exodus 20:13) This is traditionally misinterpreted as referring only
to murder. But the original Hebrew is lo tirtzach, which
clearly translates "Thou shalt not kill." Dr. Reuben Alcalay's
Complete Hebrew/English Dictionary says that the word
tirtzach, especially in classical Hebrew usage, refers to "any
kind of killing," and not necessarily the murder of a human
being.

Although the Old Testament contains some prescriptions for
meat-eating, it is clear that the ideal situation is vegetarianism,
In Genesis (1:29) we find God Himself proclaiming, "Behold, I have
given you every herb-bearing tree, in which the fruit of the tree
yielding seed, it unto you shall be for meat." And in later books of
the Bible, major prophets condemn meat-eating.

For many Christians, major stumbling blocks are the belief that
Christ ate meat and the many references to meat in the New Testament.
But close study of the original Greek manuscripts shows that the vast
majority of the words translated as "meat" and "trophe,
brome," and other words that simply mean "food" or "eating" in
the broadest sense. For example, in the Gospel of St. Luke (8:55) we
read that Jesus raised a woman from the dead and "commanded to give
her meat." The original Greek word translated as "meat" is
"phago," which means only "to eat." The Greek word for meat is
kreas ("flesh"), and it is never used in connection with
Christ. Nowhere in the New Testament is there any direct reference to
Jesus eating meat. This is in line with Isaiah's famous prophecy
about Jesus's appearance, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear
a son, and shall call him name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he
eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good."

In Thus Spoke Mohammed (the translation of the
Hadith by Dr. M.Hafiz Syed), the disciples of the prophet
Mohammed ask him, "Verily are there rewards for our doing good to
quadrupeds, and giving them water to drink?" Mohammed answers, "There
are rewards for benefiting every animal."

Lord Buddha is known particularly for His preaching against animal
killing. He established ahimsa (nonviolence) and vegetarianism
as fundamental steps on the path of self-awareness and spoke the
following two maxims, "Do not butcher the ox that plows thy fields,"
and "Do not indulge a voracity that involves the slaughter of
animals."

The Vedic scriptures of India, which predate Buddhism, also stress
nonviolence as the ethical foundation of vegetarianism. "Meat can
never be obtained without injury to living creatures," states the
,manu-samhita, the ancient Indian code of law, "Let one
therefore shun the use of meat." In another section, the
Manu-samhita warns "Having well considered the disgusting
origin of flesh and the cruelty of fettering and slaying of corporeal
beings, let one entirely abstain form eating flesh." In the
Mahabharata (the epic poem which contains 100,000 verses and
is said toe be the longest poem in the world), there are many
injunctions against killing animals. Some examples: "He who desires
to increase the flesh of his own body by eating the flesh of other
creatures lives in misery in whatever species he may take his
birth."; "Who can be more cruel and selfish than he who augments his
flesh by eating the flesh of innocent animals?"; and "Those who
desire to possess good memory, beauty, long life with perfect health,
and physical, moral and spiritual strength, should abstain form
animal food."

All living entities possess a soul. In the Bhagavad-gita,
Krishna describes the soul as the source of consciousness and the
active principle that activates the body of every living being.
According to the Vedas, a soul in a form lower than human
automatically evolves to the next higher species, ultimately arriving
at the human form. Only in the human form of life can the soul turn
its consciousness towards God and at the time of death be transferred
back to the spiritual world. In both the social order and the
universal order, a human being must obey laws.

In his Srimad-Bhagavatam purports, Srila Prabhupada says,
"All living entities have to fulfill a certain duration for being
encaged in a particular type of material body. They have to finish
the duration allotted in a particular body before being promoted or
evolved to another body. Killing an animal or any other living simply
places an impediment in the way of his completing his term of
imprisonment in a certain body. One should therefore not kill bodies
for one's sense gratification, for this will implicate one in sinful
activity." In short, killing an animal interrupts its progressive
evolution through the species, and the killer will invariably suffer
the reaction for this sinful behavior.

In the Bhagavad-gita (5.18) Krishna explains that spiritual
perfection begins when one can see the equality of all living beings,
"The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision
a learned and gentle brahmana (a priest), a cow, an elephant,
a dog, and a dog-eater (outcast)." Krishna also instructs us to adopt
the principles of spiritual vegetarianism when He states, "Offer Me
with love and devotion a fruit, a flower, a leaf, or water, and I
will accept it."

Karma

The Sanskrit word karma means "action", or more
specifically, any material action that brings a reaction that binds
us to the material world. Although the idea of karma is
generally associated with Eastern philosophy, many people in the West
are also coming to understand that karma is a natural
principle, like time or gravity, and no less inescapable. For every
action there is a reaction. According to the law of karma, if
we cause pain and suffering to other living beings, we must endure
pain and suffering in return, both individually and collectively. We
reap what we sow, in this life and the next, for nature has her own
justice. No one can escape the law of karma, except those who
understand how it works.

To understand how karma can cause war, for example, let's
take an illustration from the Vedas. Sometimes a fire starts
in a bamboo forest when the trees rub together. The real cause of the
fire however, is not the trees but the wind that moves them. The
trees are only the instruments. In the same way, the principle of
karma tell us that the United States and the Soviet Union are
not the real causes of the friction that exists between them, the
friction that may well set off the forest fire of nuclear war. The
real cause is the imperceptible wind of karma generated by the
world's supposedly innocent citizens.

According to the law of karma, the neighborhood supermarket
or hamburger stand (the local abortion clinic too, but that could be
the subject for another book) has more to do with the threat of
nuclear war than the White House or the Kremlin. We recoil with
horror at the prospects of nuclear war while we permit equally
horrifying massacres every day of the world's automated
slaughterhouses.

The person who eats an animal may say that he hasn't killed
anything, but when he buys his neatly packaged meat at the
supermarket he is paying someone else to kill for him, and both of
them bring upon themselves the reactions of karma. Can it be
anything but hypocritical to march for peace and then go to
McDonald's for a hamburger or go home to grill a steak? This is the
very duplicity that George Bernard Shaw condemned:

We pray on Sundays that we may have light To guide our footsteps on the path we tread; We are sick of war, we don't want to fight, And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead.

As Srila Prabhupada says in his explanations of
Bhagavad-gita, "Those who kill animals and give them
unnecessary pain-as people do in slaughterhouses-will be killed in a
similar way in the next life and in many lives to come...In the
Judeo-Christian scriptures, it is stated clearly 'Thou shalt not
kill.' Nonetheless, giving all kinds of excuses, even the heads of
religion indulge in killing animals and, at the same time, try to
pass as saintly persons. This mockery and hypocrisy in human society
brings about unlimited calamities such as great war, where masses of
people go out onto the battlefields and kill each other. Presently
they have discovered the nuclear bomb, which is simply waiting to be
used for wholesale destruction." Such are the effects of
karma.

Those who understand the laws of karma, know that peace
will not come from marches and petitions, but rather form a campaign
to educate people about the consequences of murdering innocent
animals (and unborn children). That will go a long way toward
preventing any increase in the world's enormous burden of
karma. To solve the world's problems we need people with
purified consciousness to perceive that the real problem is a
spiritual one. Sinful people will always exist, but they shouldn't
occupy positions of leadership.

One of the most common objections non-vegetarians raise against
vegetarianism is that vegetarians still have to kill plants, and that
this is also violence. In response it may be pointed out that
vegetarian foods such as ripe fruits and many vegetables, nuts,
grains, and milk do not require any killing. But even in those cases
where a plant's life is taken, because plants have a less evolved
consciousness than animals, we can presume that the pain involved is
much less than when an animal is slaughtered, what to speak of the
suffering a food-animal experiences throughout its life.

It's true vegetarians have to kill some plants, and that is also
violence, but we do have to eat something, and the Vedas say,
jivo jivasya jivanam: one living entity is food for another in
the struggle for existence. So the problem is not how to avoid
killing altogether-and impossible proposal-but how to cause the least
suffering to other creatures while meeting the nutritional needs of
the body.

The taking of any life, even that of a plant, is certainly sinful,
but Krishna, the supreme controller, frees us from sin by accepting
what we offer. Eating food first offered to the Lord is something
like a soldier's killing during wartime. In a war, when the commander
orders a man to attack, the obedient soldier who kills the enemy will
get a medal. But if the same soldier kills someone on his own, he
will be punished. Similarly, when we eat only prasada, we do
not commit any sin. This is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita
(3.13) "The devotees of the Lord are released from all kinds of sins
because they eat food which is offered first for sacrifice. Others,
who prepare food for personal enjoyment, eat only sin." this brings
us to the central theme of this book: vegetarianism, although
essential, is not an end in itself.

Beyond Vegetarianism

Beyond concerns of health, economics, ethics, religion, and even
karma, vegetarianism has a higher, spiritual dimension that
can help us develop our natural appreciation and love of God. Srila
Prabhupada tells us in his explanations of Srimad-Bhagavatam,
"The human being is meant for self-realization, and for that purpose
he is not to eat anything that is not first offered to the Lord. The
Lord accepts from His devotee all kinds of food preparations made
from vegetables, fruits, milk products, and grains. Different
varieties of fruits, vegetables, and milk products can be offered to
the Lord, and after the Lord accepts the foodstuffs, the devotee can
partake of the prasada, by which all suffering in the struggle
for existence will be gradually mitigated.

Krishna Himself confirmed the divinity of prasada when He
appeared in this world as Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, 500 years ago:
"Everyone has tasted these material substances before, but now, these
same ingredients have taken on extraordinary flavors and uncommon
fragrances. Just taste them and see the difference. Not to mention
the taste, the fragrance alone pleases the mind and makes one forget
all other sweetnesses. It is to be understood therefore, that these
ordinary ingredients have been touched by the transcendental nectar
of Krishna's lips and imbued with all of Krishna's qualities."

Offered food, traditionally called prasada, "the mercy of
God," offers not only the healthy life of a vegetarian, but also God
realization; not just food for the starving masses, but spiritual
nourishment for everyone. When Krishna accepts an offering, He
infuses His own divine nature into it. Prasada, therefore, is
not different from Krishna Himself. Out of His unbounded compassion
for the souls entrapped in the material world, Krishna comes in the
form of prasada, so that simply by eating, we can come to know
Him.

Eating prasada nourishes the body spiritually. By eating
prasada not only are past sinful reactions in the body
vanquished, but the body becomes immunized to the contamination of
materialism. Just as a antiseptic vaccine can protect us against a
epidemic, eating prasada protects us from the illusion and
influence of the materialistic conception of life. Therefore, a
person who eats only food offered to Krishna, can counteract all the
reactions of one's past material activities, and readily progress in
self-realization. Because Krishna frees us from the reactions of
karma, or material activities, we can easily transcend
illusion and serve Him in devotion. One who acts without karma
can dovetail his consciousness with God's and become constantly aware
of His personal presence. This is the true benefit of
prasada.

One who eats prasada is actually rendering devotional
service to the Lord and is sure to receive His blessings. Srila
Prabhupada often said that by eating prasada even once we can
escape from the cycle of birth and death, and by eating only
prasada even the most sinful person can become a saint. The
Vedic scriptures speak of many people whose lives were transformed by
eating prasada, and any Hare Krishna devotee will vouch for
the spiritual potency of prasada and the effect it has had on
his life.

Eating only food offered to Krishna is the ultimate perfection of
the vegetarian diet. After all, pigeons and monkeys are also
vegetarian, so becoming a vegetarian is not in itself the greatest of
accomplishments. The Vedas inform us that the purpose of human
life is to reawaken the soul to its relationship with God, and only
when we go beyond vegetarianism to prasada can our eating be
helpful in achieving this goal.